Known as the island of winds and the island of fortunes, Fuerteventura is the second largest island and one of the most popular holiday destinations in the Canary Islands. The island's strong winds, coupled with its subtropical location, strike a perfect balance that creates ideal weather conditions all year round. Winter is virtually indistinguishable from summer and even though the island is full of lush vegetation, rain is rare. Fuerteventura is popular for its unique culture, which blends traditional Hispanic and Canarian elements with unpretentious charm.
The island boasts dozens of attractive beaches, world-famous sand dunes and unique flora, making it a protected biosphere reserve by UNESCO. There is something for everyone here in Fuerteventura, from sprawling golf courses and windsurfing world championships, to family-friendly theme parks and stunning secluded beaches. Fuerteventura attracts numerous holidaymakers throughout the year and has them returning time and again.
Theme & water parks
The Baku Waterpark is a water theme park just outside the town of Corralejo. The park has numerous water slides, lots of swimming pools of all varieties and several other games that will amuse children of all ages. The Baku theme park also includes Animal Experience, a multi-purpose zoo that features a large aquarium with sharks, stingrays, sea lions and other sea creatures. The Animal Experience also has a unique attraction known as the Santa Ana Pirate Galleon where children can experience being shipwrecked.
Go-karting
Gran Karting boasts a kilometre-long go-karting track just outside Puerto del Rosario. You can find Gran Karting in the Risco Prieto industrial park, amid shopping centres and supermarkets. The track has a fantastic view over the Atlantic Ocean and the track is always busy with go-kart enthusiasts who come to test their skills and race each other. Gran Karting also has a spacious terrace for parents and a mini-play park for young children to play in.
Nature's finest
The natural sand dunes park of Corralejo (Parque Natural de Corralejo) is the island's most famous natural landmark and a unique protected reserve recognised by UNESCO. The sand dunes park includes rolling dunes and pristine coastlines that cover a large part of the island from Corralejo to the western side of Fuerteventura. The park is strictly protected and perfectly preserved to maintain its natural beauty, as every building in it must be sanctioned and must adhere to strict guidelines. A large number of hotels, resorts and shops exist inside the park, and many tourists seek out to explore it on foot, on horseback, on bikes and by jeep safaris.
La Lajita Oasis Park is Fuerteventura's largest zoo and it also includes a fully realised theme park. The park features thousands of plant species and hundreds of different animals from all around the world including reptiles, birds of paradise, racoons, lemurs, kangaroos, mongooses, kangaroos, bears and more. The Oasis Park spans more than 800.000 square metres and visitors can explore the enormous zoo by traversing through a fascinating trail.
The Oceanarium Explorer is a unique floating aquarium, a boat with a glass floor that travels around the Castillo Caleta de Fuste bay and allows visitors to explore the deep. The semi-submarine goes around the bay in 2-hour long trips to explore the sea bottom while providing educational attractions to nature lovers and children.
The natural cave system of Cueva del Llano is one of the island's most breathtaking attractions. This naturally formed cave hosts a museum underneath the island. The museum focuses to explain how the island was formed millions of years ago and covers numerous subjects of geology and tectonics, including studies on lava and island formations.
The Stella Canaris Zoo is a privately owned zoo that allows visitors to play and interact with animals in all sorts of interesting ways. The entry fee is very reasonable and the variety of animals, coupled with the cheerful atmosphere of the place, will make a trip here an instant hit with children.
Horse riding
The Finca Julie Horse Riding club enables tourists to explore Fuerteventura on horseback. You can go on mountain trails or via sandy coastal routes for a memorable horseback adventure. The club offers a full range of tailor-made rides for families and tourist groups, as well as riding lessons for beginners and children.
The Rancho Barranco de los Caballos in La Pared, offers horseback riding trips along the Fuerteventura West coast, as well as riding lessons for young and old alike. The trips take you through secluded and untouched spots in the island, off the beaten tourist track.
Granja Tara in El Roque is a small and friendly horse riding club that also offers affordable riding lessons. The club organises numerous horseback excursions for riders of all levels, catering to beginners and experienced riders alike.
Crines del Viento in Triquivijate is a horseback riding club that arranges hacks across Fuerteventura. There are several trips, suitable for every skill level and the school also offers shuttle services in a limited area around their premises (Puerto del Rosario, Antigua and Caleta de Fuste).
Golf
Corralejo's famous Mirador de Lobos Golf course is a must for gold fanatics. The course is the traditional home of the Fuerteventura golf club and is open throughout the year thanks to the island's ideal weather conditions. The Mirador de Lobos is a 9-hole, par-3 course with a wonderful trail through beautiful subtropical landscapes. Some holes are affected by water while some other are cleverly placed to create a tricky challenge for even the most skilled golfers. The Mirador de Lobos also features a fully equipped practice area to test your skills and prepare for the course that spans 673 meters and is located inside the residential natural park area o Corralejo.
Fuerteventura Golf Club is the most popular golfing destination on the island and features the first 18-hole golf course in Fuerteventura. Club's impressive par-72 course has holes 1 to 10 facing the Atlantic Ocean and boasts a perfectly landscaped trail. The round runs across three interconnected lakes that are irrigated by a sophisticated system. This system allows the course to be available all year round. Every feature on the course is cleverly placed to create strategic challenges, including the fairways, the tees and the rough. Fuerteventura golf championships are held here. The round of the golf championship for gentlemen is of 6,069 meters and for ladies, 5,257 meters.
A popular 18-hole course, the Golf Club Salinas de Antigua is an ultra-modern par-70 course designed by Spanish Master Manolo Piñeiro, twice world champion in golfing. The course was build utilising the latest technologies and methods to create a fascinating trail with perfectly spaced holes, breathtaking landscapes and clever water features that are powered by a clever irrigation system. The trail spans 21.450 square metres and has golfers putting across lakes, rolling grasslands and patches of desert.
Walking & hiking
Fuerteventura has more 322 km of shore and especially the west side is very suitable for walking excursions. These excursions are ideal for tourists of all ages, including young children and the elderly. Many shores feature well-maintained walking tracks and mapped trails you can follow to walk outside the island's towns and the many natural wonders of Fuerteventura.
Fuerteventura Tours offers walking tours to Cofete, as well as individual hiking tours on the island's hills. People are organised in groups of 6 to 8 people who are shuttled to and from their hotels. The hiking excursions are not suitable for young children or elderly tourists. A particularly challenging but rewarding hiking destination is the volcano Montaña Arena located between Villaverde and La Oliva.
Another wonderful walking destination is the Caldera Gairia. Tours start from Tiscamanita and then head east into the island's interior. The tour gets tourists through the volcano and over the solidified lava river from the Jaina volcano before returning to Tiscamanita through a spectacular subtropical jungle.
Jeep safari
Fuerteventura is a large and mostly untouched island with few roads, so travellers who wish to truly explore the land should sign up for a jeep safari tour across the island. There are only a handful of providers offering jeep safari tours, and note that the tours are not available every month of the year. You can book jeep safari tours through the official Fuerteventura website, or, on the spot, when you arrive at the airport. Jeep tours include trailing across dirt roads and going off-road to explore Fuerteventura's unspoilt terrain, including the famous sand dunes of Corralejo.
Cycling, mountain & quad biking
Adventurous tourists and explorers of all kinds find themselves outside the EEE Bikers club. The club offers affordable bikes for hire and also cycling tours around the island as well as trips to explore inland Fuerteventura. The EEE Bikers club offers normal bikes, electric bikes and motorcycles for rent. You can also join one of the club's numerous group excursions that take you across little-known features of the island on a bike.
Nothing beats exploring the natural sand dunes park of Fuerteventura on a quad or a special dune buggy. You can hire dune buggies and quads, or you can arrange to join an adrenaline-filled safari at X-Quad - Safaris on Quads and Dune Buggies. The X-Quad is the premiere provider of dune buggies and quad bikes on Fuerteventura. They arrange adventurous excursions across the islands and also offer their trusty vehicles for hire.
Water sports
Sailing enthusiasts of all skill levels, from the greenest newbie to the saltiest sailor can enjoy sailing at its best by hiring sailing boats and catamarans in Fuerteventura. The island of winds offers plenty of sailing challenges for experienced sailors, while the island also features numerous sailing schools where beginners can learn the basics of sailing while navigating the Canarian archipelago. Boats are rented out individually and you can opt to get one or more experienced locals on board to help you sail the waters around the island.
Even people who aren't interested in sailing can enjoy the sea and test out their sea legs thanks to the numerous sailing trips and maritime excursions that are on offer all year round. These trips take tourists around the island and into some of the island's most secluded bays and beaches, as well as travel to nearby islands, such as the scenic islet of Lobos across Corralejo. Between Fuerteventura and Lobos, it is not uncommon for tourists to spot dolphins, loggerhead turtles and even whales.
As an island famed for its winds, Fuerteventura is unsurprisingly a prime spot for surfing. Fuerteventura's strong winds create perfect waves, attracting thousands of surfers each year. Surfing is practiced with passion here by surfers of all levels. The best surf can be found on the northern coast, including Corralejo and La Oliva, both of which boast numerous great beaches perfectly suited to surfing. There are surf spots for surfers of every skill, such as Rocky point for beginners and the ominously named "suicides" for the most adventurous and hardened veterans. Surfing clubs will guide you to the most suitable beaches for your skill as it is not advisable to try them out on your own; there are several beaches with extremely violent waves, unsuitable even for professional surfers.
Windsurfing is second only to surfing in terms of popularity, thanks to the islands incredible weather conditions and strong winds. Thousands of windsurfers gather to Fuerteventura to try their skills on the many suitable beaches, but even experts need a guiding hand on this island, especially if you plan on sailing on the rocky reefs or places such as Cotillo that have large shore dumps. It's a good idea to have an in-the-know local on hand to point out the dangers as the waters and the wind can be treacherous there. Thankfully, you can find all the insider knowledge you need at one of the numerous surf bars while sharing a few drinks with the locals.
The island's unique submarine ecology, the fact that it has been formed thanks to volcanic eruptions; and year round fair weather make scuba diving a very popular water sport in Fuerteventura. There are numerous beaches where you can find perfect diving spots and many reputable scuba diving clubs and schools can help you out with training, equipment and tours. Diving is strictly controlled in Fuerteventura and you cannot just go scuba diving by yourself thanks to the local authorities' strict safety precautions. For that reason, all tourists are required by law to scuba dive through one of the legal diving centres only.
Another popular water sport, water skiing comes in many varieties in Fuerteventura, including jet skiing, banana boat skiing and wakeboarding. Jet skiing involves motorised mini-boats that "ski" on the sea. Banana boats present the cheapest form of water skiing on Fuerteventura and are great fun. Wakeboarding involves skiing while being dragged by a motorboat and is probably the most popular form of waterskiing in Fuerteventura. For that reason, there are numerous providers offering wakeboarding services.
Historical highlights
The municipality of Bentacuria is a historic residential area that has a long history of being ransacked by pirates and rebuilt many times over. Bentacuria is home to the Iglesia Catedral de Santa Maria de Betancuria, the most popular and iconic cathedral on Fuerteventura. The cathedral is the only building left standing from before the pirate raids and it attracts thousands of locals and tourists who come to marvel the statues and the church's architecture.
The "Faro de Jandia" is the iconic lighthouse that pointed the way to ships traversing the southern tip of the island. Nowadays, this scenic lighthouse attracts locals and tourists alike with its unpretentious beauty. The lighthouse is meticulously maintained to its original state not because it serves its original purpose, but as a tribute to its usefulness and also as popular tourist attraction in Jandia.
Another popular lighthouse, the Faro de la Entallada is a historical lighthouse located on a steep hillside at the western side of the island. This lighthouse is almost unvisited by tourists thanks to its remote location, allowing it to maintain all of its original charm intact. Tourists must take a narrow dirt road in order to visit the Faro del la Entallada, and even most tourist guides don't know of its existence. Your best bet is asking a local and using a quad bike to get there boasting the most magnificent vistas on the whole island, it's well worth the effort.
Museums
The recently opened Museo de la Sal (museum of salt) is a museum that is a lot more exciting than it sounds. Unique to the world, this museum explores the importance of salt for trade, development, and ultimately, for the rise and fall of empires and civilisations. Through this outdoor museum's exhibits, visitors learn how salt shaped history and why it is so important even to the present day. The museum of salt is situated on a beautiful location in an old salt production area.
Located inside El Cotillo's old lighthouse, the charming Museum of Traditional Fishing is a genuinely interesting attraction that only people with such a rich fishing culture - as found in Fuerteventura - could create. This compact museum examines all things fishing and shows tourists how people have been catching fish since ancient times. Fishing has evolved thanks to technology, and in this museum you can see how every method used today came about - and what was used in the past.
The Centro de Arte Canario, the Canarian art centre, located in La Olivia, Fuerteventura features unique art pieces created by local artists. The beautiful building of "Casa Mane" houses this interesting art museum, which offers a diverse range of fascinating exhibits. Artists from all over the Canaries display their pieces here, and the art centre has a comprehensive collection of modern and traditional Canarian art such as sculpture, paintings, architectural designs and more. The museum is very spacious and each room is unique in the exhibits it features. Most of the pieces found here cannot be seen anywhere else in the entire world. Don't miss out!